Over the last 20 years CSAG has developed and promoted a number of important principles guiding the usage of climate information for decision making. These principles have emerged through extensive engagement with real decision making processes throughout Africa and internationally (link to a list of projects here?). They provide guidance that as much as is possible is scientifically robust and can be supported through the scientific literature, and yet is pragmatic and practical in providing a usable and useful framework for actual decision making. These principles are described below with more detail available in the follow through links
The nature of a changing climate
What will a changed climate look like? Many presentations of climate change focus on changes in the climate mean. For example they might show the change in the mean annual precipitation for an area, or the change in the mean daily maximum temperatures. However most impacts of a changing climate do not occur around the mean but at particular thresholds that are relevant to a particular system. For example, many crops have a certain upper temperature limit above which they suffer from heat stress unless protected in some way. This is only relevant during certain phases of the growing season. Information on changes in mean annual temperature do not necessarily reveal a potential impact on this particular crop.
Climate models and projections
All models fail to capture some aspect of the historical climate. Some models capture some aspects better than others but for any particular region and any particular variable, different models will perform better or worse.
All models are wrong
Additionally, the ability to accurately capture the historical climate (by some measure) does not extrapolate to skill in projected changes for the future.
Using multiple lines of evidence
The co-exploration of climate information
Red flags, things to look out for